


the strange resurrection of gideon nav

by siltblooded



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: F/F, alternate universe - no thanergy, alternate universe - pseudomodern setting, alternate universe - vampires as lyctors, content warning for ianthe being 1)a noted cannibal and 2)a total asshole, first person POV, major character death & funeral (with happy ending), tltexchange2020
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-14 00:15:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28662324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/siltblooded/pseuds/siltblooded
Summary: I arrived early the morning of the third day, just in time for your funeral.I wouldn’t have come at all, if not for Harrow’s message. One postcard, arrived the night before last, reading in neat nunscript,I invoke in you now the covenant of the chain.She’d written it in her own blood, the delightful creature.I don’t know about you, but I’m a sucker for a good binding ritual. Besides, I could never deny our Harry, could I?
Relationships: Gideon Nav/Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Gideon Nav/Harrowhark Nonagesimus/Ianthe Tridentarius, Gideon Nav/Ianthe Tridentarius, Harrowhark Nonagesimus/Ianthe Tridentarius
Comments: 8
Kudos: 28





	the strange resurrection of gideon nav

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dilapidatedcorvid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dilapidatedcorvid/gifts).



> Thank you to dilapidatedcorvid for being my pinch hitter in the 2020 TLT holiday exchange! (and a hearty thank you to cassyblue for organizing this event)
> 
> Special thanks to my betas, who agreed to look over this last minute. You guys got me into this series and it has altered my brain chemistry unfortunately
> 
> prompts:  
>  _1) "Why don't you have a piece of bread and maybe you'll calm down"_  
>  2) Third House twins character study ( no twincest, please)  
> 3) "All are of the dust, and all turn to dust again" (Ecclesiastes 3:20)/"Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust" (Book of Common Prayers)

**the chapel**

I arrived early the morning of the third day, just in time for your funeral. 

I wouldn’t have come at all, if not for Harrow’s message. One postcard, arrived the night before last, reading in neat nunscript, **I invoke in you now the covenant of the chain.** She’d written it in her own blood, the delightful creature. 

I don’t know about you, but I’m a sucker for a good binding ritual. Besides, I could never deny our Harry, could I? 

So I made a few calls, gathered my materials, found an appropriately dreary black dress, and booked my flight. The postcard, and its flaking brown ink, was tucked carefully into my minaudière, in its place of honour. No flowers, but Harrow would sooner strangle me than receive a condolence bouquet, so that was fine. 

Drearburh was too small to merit its own airport, or its own bus stop, for that matter. If each house was a jewel on the Emperor’s crown, the Ninth was surely the littlest and dullest. I had to take a transfer from Koniortos to Halimede(flying first class, naturally) just to get within five hours drive. 

It was a quarter past midnight when I landed. Coronabeth met me at the airport in your car. 

We’d called each other, of course, but it had been a half year since we’d seen each other in person. The instant she saw me she cried “Ianthe!” and flung herself at me like nothing was amiss. We embraced, and for a moment, it was as if we were closer than ever, had never been parted. She smelled like lavender and rosewater, and her bangles made metallic rustles against each other when she lifted her arms. 

“Coronabeth, my dear,” I murmured. “You’re looking well.”

It was the truth. Even in the dimness of the winter night she looked lovely, hale and healthy, everything I was not. Am not. Her nose and cheeks were pink with cold, her blood so close to the surface of the skin I could practically taste it. 

“Thank you.” said Corona, with the conviction of one used to compliments. “You as well- Your hair's so _short_ now. Very chic.” 

_Short_ was just above my shoulders. It had been at this length for a few years now, but Coronabeth’s perception of me seemed to have frozen at twenty-two. 

I studied her then, my golden twin, looked for the traces of change that the last few years had wrought upon her. Her face a little more angular, perhaps, the laugh lines a little deeper, with the roguish, self possessed charm that settled around Coronabeth's shoulders habitually like velificatio. 

"Let me put your bags in the trunk," she said, oblivious to my scrutiny. "The sooner we get there, the better. Cam thinks you might get through to her, poor thing- Here-" And she made a valiant attempt to harness the three suitcases I had in tow.

I had never previously concerned myself with what Camilla Hect thought, seeing as she was _your_ friend, not mine, but I didn't voice this.

I slid into the passenger seat while Corona took care of my luggage, wrinkling my nose at the cracked leather. The car hadn’t been cleaned since your disappearance and your fast food wrappers were still stuffed at the bottom of the cupholder. There was a skeleton bobblehead attached to the dashboard, grossly inaccurate, and it was a testament to how much Harrow loved you that she hadn’t made you throw the thing out. The legs had one bone each, and no joints. 

“Nav, you incurable moron.” I sighed, but of course you weren't there to hear it. Then I snapped the figurine off the dashboard. The base of the figurine left a slight discolouration behind, a dark circle that looked out of place in its sunbleached surroundings. It went into my purse, next to the postcard- and the knife. 

Coronabeth slammed the trunk closed, your shitheap of a car groaned on its bearings, and I snapped the purse shut before she could see. 

Coronabeth nearly grazed a parked car on our way out, and was humming along to some inane pop station within five minutes. Some things never changed. 

We caught up. How were we doing lately, if we’d kept in touch with mummy and daddy(Corona had, I hadn’t), if I’d heard of Judith’s promotion(I had not)... 

I’ll spare you the details, since Third gossip must be the most boring thing in the world to you, who has neither the context nor braincells to understand it.

Suffice to say we passed the first few hours that way. It was good to talk to Coronabeth in person again, without the crackle of a phone line distorting her voice. 

Soon we were out of city limits, and in the foothills of Drearburh’s namesake mountain range. The mountains themselves were indistinct shapes on the horizon line, too far to see clearly. Thirty minutes after that the radio connection, which had been growing ever more sputtery and wavering, shorted out. Coronabeth reached for the dial, half heartedly, but from then on it was mostly static, and the only station we could catch seemed to be some incredibly gloomsome gospel music. 

At the three hour mark we crossed over. The wooden boundary sign read _Welcome to Drearburh: Population-_ and here the painted letters were worn away, except for a dark and lonely _9_ in the tens place _._

We fell silent. I was content to let the silence sit, Corona wasn’t. She was drumming her nails against the steering wheel, the acrylics rattling an irritating percussion. That was always her nervous tell. I leant my head against the window, shut my eyes in a facsimile of sleep, and waited for her to crack.

The Ninth was the most remote and unsettled of all the houses, covered mostly in dense forest. Now the mountains were much closer, loomed overhead. Thick and perpetual fog wraithed the trees, a child clinging to coattails. Drearburh itself was lodged somewhere in the heart of those mountains, and near the base of the mountain was the prison complex, a squat gray monolith by the side of the highway. The lights were off when we passed it. 

Coronabeth stopped tapping her nails abruptly and drew in a breath. 

I said, preemptively, “Not right now.” 

“I haven’t even said anything,” she said, pouting prettily. 

Pinching the bridge of my nose, “I already know what you’re going to say, and it’s going to be the same thing that you’ve said the last three times, and I really don’t want to hear it again.” That was the wrong thing to say. Coronabeth sounded hurt when she said,

“You don’t know that.” 

“Well then, what new and enlightening idea have you come up with?” 

A long silence, filled with my sister’s sulking.

“None,” I continued. “Because you don’t have the aptitude to be a vitamancer and I do. Believe me when I say I’m working on it, alright?” 

Coronabeth didn’t respond. She was looking straight out, at the road, and her grip was tight on the steering wheel. I took pity on her.

“I’m following a potential lead right now,” I said. “If it goes well, it won’t even matter that you don’t have aptitude.”

“We’re in this together, aren’t we?” 

“Of course together. We promised, remember?”

That seemed to placate her. 

“I need you,” Corona said, in a trembling rush, and reached one hand out to me blindly, over the center console. 

“I need you.” I repeated, grasping her hand, gave it three quick squeezes- our childhood signal. Then, softening my voice, coaxing, “It won’t be for much longer, alright? Trust me, sweetheart.” 

“I always do.” Coronabeth said lowly. I waited, staring at her profile, until she squeezed back, and then I let her go. 

The mountains came up on us all at once, and then we were no longer in the foothills, but in the thick of them. The road narrowed, transitioned to dirt. 

At last we came upon Drearburh. A dusty, dying town, yoked to its dusty, dying mines. When we rolled through the streets they were empty, nearly abandoned. Dominicus was still an hour away from rising, and the remnant night sat sluggishly, the greyish-purple of a fading bruise. 

The cathedral was the grandest thing left in Drearburh, located half between the edge of town and half between the forest. Coronabeth deposited me in the courtyard out front with promises that my baggage would get where it needed to be, and I gave the building a critical one-over. 

It was huge, stolid, wrought in cold white stone, towering spires so far above me that they vanished into thin points against the paling sky. Framing the doors were intricate carvings of penitents doing fun little activities like kneeling on bone shards and self flagellating. Very ominous, very Ninth. Completely fucking boring. 

The doors were open, so I interpreted that as my invitation.

I hadn’t been in a church for years. As a heretic, hedonist, and nonbeliever, I found them tedious. I took one step over the threshold, didn’t immolate, then took another. There was some slight resistance, the hum of ancient, mystic wards, but either they hadn’t been refreshed in some time or Harrow had countermanded them to let me through. 

The lighting inside was essentially non existent. What apertures there were existed as thin, begrudging slots carved high in the walls, which let in only the barest minimum of thin, soupy daylight. There were stubby candles placed around(unlit), along with twin rows of gas lamps down each side of the hall(unlit), and some grotty glowing powder smeared atop the arches(so dim as to be negligible). 

I’d never been to a Ninth church before. It was very different from the ones we have in the Third. No stained glass, or gilded paintings, or ornate ostensorium to hold the sacrament. There were no reliquaries, nor a ceremonial banquet table at the transept. 

There was a hall, with some radiating chapels, and transept separating the hall from the apse, where the hall terminated. It was anticlimactic, as far as churches went. I’d hoped to see something interesting, something mystical, something that gave an indication towards the manifold mysteries of the locked tomb. There weren’t even any black vestals inside to scowl at me. Instead there were some incredibly ordinary seating, some incredibly ordinary carpet, and faded black banners with some skull variants hung about. The whole of it was in some stage of slow decay; everything threadbare, everything worn.

Although, it was intriguing that there were no depictions of His Celestial Kindliness anywhere in a church dedicated to his worship. 

I continued through the silent pews. The nave of the church had sat a thousand at some point, when Drearburh still had a thousand to sustain it. Each pew had a tattered kneeler built into the back, to save the congregation’s nonagenarian knees. The narrow slits of light cast partial shadows over the dark wood, illuminated the worn edges, the dulled scratches. Was that scratch the start of a _G_?

I tried to imagine you and Harrow, as hateful little children, knelt together in the dusty pews, pinching each other when your minders weren’t looking. I tried to see the same beauty Harrow had seen, whatever had compelled her to bind herself here, why she had consigned her heart and life to this open grave. I failed. 

The sanctuary at the far end was barely more than an altar and a bench on a raised bit of platform. No one was there, but I spied a parclose left slightly ajar at the back. I slipped through and entered a little room, likely the family chapel. It had an altar, a display of skulls inset around the altar, and, leant up against the back wall, your casket. 

The casket was open for viewing, so I went over and took a nice long look. 

You were dead, of course, but you looked pretty good for being dead. Someone had dressed you in a black button up and slacks, and perched your sunglasses upon your nose. Your hair had been styled up in your customary fashion, and there was a faint waft of your cologne. That ludicrous sword was in the casket with you, and your hands(gloved in polymer mitts) rested clasped on the pommel of the sword like some kind of warrior king. From the waist down you were shrouded in black linen, and in addition to your cologne I could smell myrrh as well as aloe. Your wedding ring was strung on a chain around your neck, probably for the same reason they'd hidden your hands. 

You looked peaceful, almost asleep. Whoever had embalmed you had done a very good job. The stitches holding your lips together were nearly imperceptible. I knew from Corona(who knew from Sextus) that the government autopsy had returned you like a carved leg of lamb- it must have been a labour of love to put you back together. I imagined someone hunched over you for long hours, restoring you bit by bit, until you were no longer Jane Doe, corpse recovered from the side of a road, and were instead Gideon Nav, beloved wife and cherished friend. 

This one I didn’t have to work very hard to imagine. A dark form was by the head of your casket. She could have been mistaken for a small, particularly lumpy shadow at first, but the hood of her robes had slipped off and revealed Harrowhark Nonagesimus, sleeping half slumped over your dead body. 

She looked pitiful huddled on that folding chair. Unassuming, almost, but I knew better. She had secrets under those robes. 

Looking at the two you now I was reminded, viscerally, of a hospital room back in Ida, the death deferred. It was different now, of course. You were capital D Dead, not just in an unflattering hospital gown, and Harrow wore the counterpart of your ring on her hand. 

I tapped at the corner of Harrow's robe. She shifted slightly, revealing more of her face, but did not wake. She must have been exhausted. Harrow only slept fitfully, in resentful necessity. It certainly looked as though she hadn’t slept for multiple days and only passed out here as a concession to her continued survival. 

Harrow’s paint was smudged, days-old coat of greasepaint cracked in places. The expression beneath the paint was pinched, haggard, eyes sunken and wan. No peace even in dreams. Her hair was untidy and several weeks in want of a shearing. Strands of it fell into her face. 

A strange, piteous sentimentality overtook me as I beheld her, and it was this that compelled me to reach out and brush the hair from her forehead. 

Harrow stirred. Something gentled in her expression, that pinched brow relaxed, the sharp set of the mouth softened. She murmured, half in sleep, with wretched, unguarded tenderness, 

"Gideon?" 

"I'm afraid not," I said, as kindly as I could. "Wake up, Harry."

She opened her eyes. Recognition dawned, then remembrance. In an instant all softness was gone. She was once more a woman bereft, unmoored in her grief. 

Fascinating, really. 

I did not comfort her, not exactly, but I did move a step closer. If she turned, perhaps, towards me, if she reached for my forearm, gripped my wrist with a drowning grip, leant heavily against my side for a minute or three, it was surely a trick of the morning. In that dim little chapel we were unlit, unreal, unspoken. 

“Ianthe,” she said. I considerately ignored how her voice was on the glass edge of tears. “You came.” 

“Obviously,” I said. “The favour of the chain is binding. You were quite clear about that when you swore me in.”

Harrow pulled away, suddenly. I stayed where I was. 

“I see,” she said. “It is good that you honour the covenant.” 

“My blood is your blood, my bones your bones,” I recited, doing a disdainful little curtsy. “My soul mine to preserve and yours to entreaty. Will you tell me why I’m here already?”

Harrowhark didn’t respond for a moment. When she did, she did so slowly, weighing every word on her tongue. 

“I need your help,” she said. “I need you to swear to me that-”  
  
But I didn’t get to find out what _that_ was just yet, because at that moment your swordmaster and that morbid poet man came in. 

"My lady." Said your swordmaster, inclining her head respectfully. 

"Lady Harrowhark," said the poet, in the portentous tones of someone delivering unwanted bad news. He was wearing a green wreath of mourning, and the leaves rustled tremulously.

"Aiglamene, Ortus," acknowledged Harrow. She had transitioned from a shattered girl to the Lady of the Ninth seamlessly, her voice now was the picture of authority, without even the slightest trace of tears. 

The three exchanged glances. 

“It’s to do with the... sacred rites,” Ortus said, placing an inordinate amount of emphasis on _rites_. This was clearly Niner code for something they didn’t want me to know; the Ninth dealt in secrets the way the Third dealt in glamour. 

Harrow’s face was impassive in the way that signalled she was experiencing an oncoming headache. 

"I will see that it is done." Said Harrow, smoothing out the wrinkles of her robe. She rose, then wavered. She was too well schooled to turn back, but I recognized this. She was loath to leave you. 

“Don't worry, Harry." I said. "I'll stay with her."

They were the same words that I'd said to her countless times as she kept vigil by your sickbed. If it hadn't been for me she would have wasted away there, without eating, showering, or sleeping. A real _waste_. Hah. 

They worked then, and they worked now. Thank God for precedent, because otherwise what was about to happen next would have been much harder. Harrowhark didn’t thank me, but I didn’t expect her to. It was our old understanding. Whatever thanks to be had had already taken place years ago. 

Before she left, she bent over your casket, and pressed a kiss to your cold dead brow, revolting in its intimacy. 

“I’ll return soon.” Harrow whispered. Her retainers flanked her, and they swept out of the room like a trio of shades.

And then I was left alone with your corpse. I listened to their footsteps receding until I was absolutely sure they were gone. 

First I rubbed a spot of facepaint from my dress, wishing(not for the first time) that I could check my reflection in a mirror somewhere. Then I took out the knife. 

“Look alive, Ninth,” I said, ostensibly to you. “This is the most important day of your life.”

Complete quiet. 

“The sunglasses I would have gone without.” I continued. “You couldn’t catch me dead in something so hideous.”

No response. 

“Speak now, or forever hold your peace.” 

Dead silence. 

“You _brainless worm_ ,” I enunciated, with no little disgust. “You _bullheaded moron._ What on God’s green earth were you thinking? Running off to get yourself killed. You could have- at least told me- where you were going-” And I broke there, bit off the rest of my sentence, because I was approaching something dangerously close to sentiment. For _Gideon Nav_.

Yes- I got attached. In the same way one gets attached to a dog, a particularly ugly one, without a thought in her head, that trails you around and snarls at you and sits by you when you most want it to leave. God help me. 

One moment passed, then two. I swallowed down the feeling. 

The clasp of the glove took but a second, and then I was carefully sliding off your right gauntlet. What lay below wasn’t pretty. You’d died a violent death, clearly, hands scraped to all hell, the fingernails blunt and bloodied. 

I took your hand in mine, felt the press of the flesh, tested the give. 

The trident knife had been Babs’ offhand, once. Exquisitely made, presumably, given how he’d always preened about it. The blade was a cold comfort of steel against your lifeless hand. 

I measured twice, and cut once. 

The meat was easy enough. The bone took a little longer, but I pressed harder, and then your right thumb came off in one clean shear. Quickly, moving to minimize the chance of anyone seeing, I put your thumb into one of my spare silk handkerchiefs(purple, initials embroidered in gold), wrapped it neatly, and hid it in my bag with the knife and the postcard. Back on went the gauntlet, with refastened clasp, and when I was done repositioning the hand one wouldn’t be able to tell at all. 

“I would apologize,” I said. “But this is for your sake.” 

And, for good measure, I leant down and kissed you on the cheek. 

**three months before**

I left Harrow sleeping in the bed and snuck down the stairs, fully intending to sneak out the back door. 

I stopped short when I passed the kitchen and found you there, awake and plating some flapjacks. Normally you were snoring away on the living room couch on mornings like this, and I leant against the doorframe, unsure what had changed. 

“Hey,” you said, looking up. You were wearing an apron over boxers and a tee, one of those tacky numbers that had a flaming skull puking out a smaller, also flaming skull. It read “kiss the grillmaster” across the chest. 

"Nav." I said. 

"Tridentarius." You returned, and slid a mug across the kitchen table. "Care for some tea?" 

I hesitated. You seemed a little serene for the situation, but I _had_ used Harrow’s toothpaste, out of spite, and it was chalkily bland in a way that made me feel like I had swilled a mouthful of cremains. Wouldn't hurt to get the taste out of my mouth.

"Why not." I said. The mug was lukewarm when I took it in hand. "It's going tibia a good day." I read.

You snickered, though you had to have seen that mug at least a thousand times before. 

"Go on. It's not poisoned." 

"Doubtful," I said, and took a sip. Milk and two sugars, exactly the way I liked it. I didn't know how you knew. 

Being done with arranging your flapjacks, you had procured a loaf of bread. The bread looked homemade, a dark, rough loaf, like something a monk would eat. You drew the bread knife from its block and cut off a hearty chunk for yourself, as well as a few thinner slices to toast. 

Noticing me looking, you offered, "Breakfast?"

"I'm full, thank you." 

"At least take something for the road," you said, rummaging in the fridge. After a second you slid a container across the kitchen island to me. 

It contained snow leek salad. There was a strip of masking tape across the side that labelled it _FOR HARROW_ , with a little hand drawn heart.

"Fork," you said, placing it into my hand. Another rummage in the fridge, "Annnnd croutons." 

I watched you shake homemade croutons onto the salad, a little bemused. 

"No dressing, I'm afraid," you said. I doubted you were aware of how much you sounded like Magnus the Fifth in that moment. "You can eat this in the car if you want, I don't mind." 

"How generous," I said, eyeing the salad. "How shall I ever repay you?"

"Weird, that's what your mom said to me last night."

I laughed, more out of surprise than anything. You ducked your head, a small, pleased smile tugging lopsided at the edges of your mouth. I don't think you ever knew how easy it was to read you, how clear the satisfaction was when you felt that someone was happy with you. 

I tried some of the salad and found it was good, if not as rich as the fare we had at home.

You were now cutting up the toast into triangular pieces and carefully spreading the very thinnest sheen of butter on each one, so as not to overwhelm Harrowhark’s pathetic little tastebuds. 

Thus I couldn't see your face when you said, carefully-

"Is she alright?" 

"Yes," I said, a little offended. "What do you take me for, some sort of axe murderer?"

You jabbed the butter knife at me in accusation. 

"Hey, I know about what happens between two adepts. Looking at each other's bones and licking spleens and shit."

"It's more enjoyable than you make it sound," I said. "My condolences to the unenlightened."

"What," you said, the beginning of a smirk curling onto your lips. "Are you offering to enlighten me?" 

"I wouldn't lick your spleen if it was the last spleen on earth." 

"But you would lick Harrow's."

I shrugged, languid, one shouldered. 

"If the opportunity arose." 

"Alright," You said, as if that settled it. Then you leaned over, familiar as anything, and kissed me. 

I stilled, a little, but well, who was I to deny the power of a woman's tongue in my mouth, and kissed back. You, rather considerately, came around to the other side of the table so we didn’t have to crane our necks. 

We kept on, and didn't break apart until Harrowhark shuffled down the stairs in her fuzzy black slippers and said _"excuse me?"_ in an apoplexy of shock. 

I did pull away then. You had lit up the instant you heard the _thwap-thwap-thwap_ of your gloom mistress entering the room and were grinning at Harrow. 

"Morning," you said, your voice gone all soft and melting, and Harrow said "Good morning," back, staring daggers into me.

"What are you doing with my cavalier," she said, glare darker than the deepest catacombs of Drearburh.

"Kissing," You supplied. "You might have heard of it." 

"We kissed at our wedding, beloved," Harrow said, sounding incredibly irritated and fond, which was her normal state around you. "I meant what are _the two of you_ doing."

"Well, you see, Harry," I paused for dramatic effect, and to spear a bit of lettuce with my fork. The crunch of it was obscenely satisfying in the face of Harrowhark's wrath. "When two people like each other very, very much,"

"I object." you said. "We hate each other." 

"When two people hate each other very, very, much," I amended. "Sometimes they choose to resolve this by-"

Harrow drew in an enormously annoyed breath. You, seeing the imminent explosion and heading to ward it off at the pass, placed a triangle of toast into Harrow’s hand. 

"Why don’t you have a piece of toast and maybe you’ll calm down," you said, and- miracle of miracles- Harrow listened. 

Harrow accepted the bread with absentminded habit and took a vengeful bite, still staring at me like I was a snake manifesting in her home. 

“Explain yourself,” she demanded. 

“I don’t appreciate your tone, Nonagesimus,” I said, pretending to be fascinated by the crouton on the end of my fork. “I was just coming down for breakfast when Gideon decided that I was simply too irresistible and she wanted to ravish me over this salad. I’m a bystander, really.”

That flummoxed Harrow. Clearly she expected me to have employed some dastardly plan to ensnare you and time it so that she would walk in at the perfect moment. To be fair, if I had known you were interested at all I would have gone for something similar. About ten minutes prior I’d thought the two of you immune to being homewrecked, and this was now opening up bad and entertaining possibilities in my mind. 

“Gideon,” said Harrowhark, looking like someone had just told her that the King Undying had died. “Then, was this- Are you- Are you perhaps no longer-”

“No!” You said, forcefully. “No, that’s not it Harrow. I love you.”

“Then why-”

You said, in a rush, like you had rehearsed it, "Harrow, I'm your cavalier and wife- it's basically in the job description to follow you into the dark. No way am I going to let you embark in weird lyctoral cult rituals and make out with Ianthe Tridentarius by yourself." 

You stared at each other, not speaking. I chewed more salad, loudly.

"Beloved," Harrow said, very slowly, "Ianthe and I don't. Make out. We are not- intimate." 

“We are not rubbing spleens,” I confirmed, twirling my fork, leaning back in my chair with a very cultivated look of nonchalance. 

“Precisely,” Harrow said. “There isn’t even the slightest possibility that we- that we would-” 

This was classic Harrowhark obliviousness. I had been flinging myself at Harrow’s feet, repeatedly, for the past five years, keeping each encounter like a bauble in my mind, and then afterwards she wouldn’t think of me at all, not like how I thought of her. In my chest I held the cardinal sin: loving someone just a little more than I was loved. 

It was despicable, detestable, a little humiliating, frankly. I was feeling appropriately sorry for myself when you said, equally slowly,

"But you said-" 

Which did pique my interest.

“So you _have_ discussed me.” I said, delighted. 

“Absolutely not,” Harrow said, at the same time you said “Uh, yeah.” 

Harrow turned around so fast her toast triangle hit you in the arm.

“What?” She demanded. “When have we ever-” 

“Last week, when you-”

“I did no such thing.” 

"You asked me if I wanted to keep covenant with Ianthe," you said, throwing your hands up in an expansive gesture of _what are you talking about_. “Was I _not_ supposed to interpret that as-”

“Obviously not!” 

“Then what did you-”

"The secrets of the tomb, Griddle, the whispered words that die upon the lips of its eternal servants-”

“Holy shit.” You interjected. Your eyes were very wide. “Holy shit!” Then, indignant, “It took me _eighteen years_ for you to spill your dark and brooding entrails and Ianthe gets it in _five_? I died for you!" 

“I’m just that good.” I said, spearing two croutons on my fork this time. “And you were clinically dead for thirty seconds, it’s not the same.” 

But you were both ignoring me now. Harrow had drawn you down to her, one hand cupping your neck, the other low on your waist. She was saying to you, quiet, intent,

“Gideon- You are, and always will be, the first flower of my house, dearest to my heart, the breath that I breathe, irreplaceable, cherished-”

“Harrow,” you said, and there was an odd note in your voice that made me afraid you were about to cry. “Harrow, fuck, I-”

“Shhh,” Harrow soothed. “I know, love, I know-”

“One flesh, one end.” You choked out. 

“One flesh, one end.” Harrow repeated. I, who hadn’t agreed to anything involving fleshes and ends, (except with Babs, and _that_ was a mistake I didn’t like thinking about) said “Ahem!” loudly. 

You didn’t pay me any attention. In fact the two of you were now pressed together, forehead to forehead, with your eyes closed. It made you look like you were trying to psychically commune. Was this allowed? 

I closed my own eyes, hoping the sight would vanish upon reopening. No such luck. In fact, you were turning down Harrow’s collar, carefully unbuttoning the top two buttons. The shirt Harrow had slept in was yours to begin with, and it slid nearly off her shoulder, exposing the damage from the night before. Harrow’s neck was a mottle of livid bruising from where I’d savaged it, with two pinpricks starting to scab over, right over her jugular. 

“Aw, honey,” you said, in the softest voice, tracing Harrow’s bruises tenderly with your fingertips, and then- _oh_. 

"God," I said, beseeching, eyes raised in supplication to the popcorn ceiling, "The women you put on this earth to guard your sacred mysteries are kissing each other."

Right in front of my salad. Lord have mercy. 

The invocation of the Lord seemed to have an effect on Harrow. She separated from you, though she remained in your arms, and was blushing in the way only a butt-touched nun could blush. 

“Well,” I said, primly. “If the two of you are finished, I need to get going before I miss my flight.” 

“Yeah,” you said, clearly still in a daze. “Um, yeah, hang on. I’ll- I can- yeah.” And you lumbered out of the kitchen, in the complete opposite direction of where you were supposed to be going. 

I sighed. 

“Good feeding,” I said to Harrow, to be polite. Harrow nodded, briskly, avoiding eye contact. I took that as my sign to head out. 

It was fast, because there was nothing to pack. I hadn’t brought anything with me- recently we had worked out an arrangement where my visits went from four times a year to once every other month, a development that made you cross, Harrow peevish, and me absolutely incandescent with the power of the petty victory. Thus I had won the right to have some of my things stowed semipermanently in the garage, including my spare set of clothes, my secondmost enticing necklace, and a travel sized tube of toothpaste. Spearmint, because I’m not deranged, and because the only alternative to Harrow’s sodium bicarbonate disaster was your fluorescently artificial strawberry gunge. 

I waited in the driveway for you to show up, running my tongue over my teeth, contemplatively. Here was the central incisor, the lateral, the canine… Previously I had thought you nothing but a meatheaded, stubborn cavalier, normally below my notice. Normally I had a much more interesting quarry. Now, though…

I visualized myself laying you out, holding you down with a good bit of tendon, and carving you open. 

Spleens weren’t actually all that interesting to me- I preferred the liver, for the taste. The aorta was best, so I’d save that for last, and sample the other morsels on offer. The kidneys, for the first course, the lungs for the second, working around, laying your organs bare bit by bit until at last I came upon the raw wreck of the heart. 

I shivered a little in anticipation of that heartsblood. It was too bad that Harrow would flay me if she suspected me of harbouring the teensiest bit of bloodlust towards you. Now that I was considering it you could have made a fine meal. 

**the interment**

Harrow returned at sunrise. She’d changed into a set of formal robes, which were distinguished from her normal robes by being ever so slightly more shadowy, and having sleeves trimmed with lace. She had also painted a different, more intricate skull on, and wore a bone rosary around her neck. 

“Harrowhark.”

She ignored me and made right for your casket, which was rude and completely typical. 

“Where are the others?” 

“Making preparations.” Said Harrow, terse. She wasn’t looking at me as she said this, only at you. Her fingers were tugging on the shroud at your waist, pulling it up carefully to cover you. She drew it up to your neck before pausing, could not bring herself to go on. 

I covered her hand, very lightly, with my own, and she breathed out a breath that was more of a shudder. Together we drew the shroud over your face. 

The casket lid was heavy, and Harrow struggled before I caught the other edge. It shut with a final wooden toll. 

“We need to talk.” She said, without preamble. 

From the depths of her robes she produced a delicate chain of bone- or rather, the last link of a chain. I eyed it hungrily. 

“I must ask you for a final favour,” said Harrowhark. “I have embarked on a certain work, regarding the death of- my cavalier. If you assist me in the completion of the work-”

“You dissolve the chain,'' I said. “The pact is finished.”

“Yes.” Harrow said, though it looked like it pained her to do so. “You would be free of any prior obligation you have made to me or the house of the Ninth.”

“Hmm,” I said, in an intonation as though she’d said _we’re going for brunch_ , and not handed me what I wanted on a silver platter. “Tell me about this work.”

Harrow’s scowl deepened. “I am not at liberty to say here.”

“Then why should I agree?” I said, quite reasonably. “Your cav’s well and gone, isn’t she? What more can you do for her? Why ask me to help a lost cause?”

She flinched as if struck, whirled around to face me, eyes wild. I had hit upon the raw nerve, electrified it. The despondency, the agony, was raw and fresh for anyone to see. A better person would have comforted her, or at least afforded her the dignity of pretending not to see. I leant in and said, 

“What’s in it for me?”

Harrow glowered at me. I entertained the possibility of her pulling out a stake of hawthorn and trying to slay me on the spot. 

Finally, she grit, sounding as if each word was tearing her up by the molars, “What would you have from me?” 

“What I've always wanted,” I said softly, watching her face. There was unconcealed resentment there, which gave me shivers, because I am a bad person with terrible taste in nuns. 

“Take what you will.” she said, tightly.

Your casket was a bit of a mood killer, and no one even slightly decent would have done it there. I had never possessed an iota of basic human decency, and I wasn't about to start now, so I drew her into my arms and- don't give me that look, Ninth, you know what comes next- traced her carotid artery with my fingertips. Our version of a lover’s caress. 

Her skin was warm beneath my touch, feverishly hot. I had forgone evening gloves in case of this eventuality, and I was wickedly glad for it now. 

You wouldn’t know this, Nav, but blood is the best drink you’ll ever have. 

There is a bottomless hunger to becoming a lyctor. It costs _so much_ thalergy to host a soul, burning both you and him, forever and ever and ever, unable to be separated. Revenants are always greedy, always grasping, and Babs was no exception. He was dead, but whichever fragment of him powering my vitamancy now still reached out, in bleak, senseless flailings, desperate to feed. I ate him, swallowed him, made him into one of the restless dead, and now he was eating me.

Harrow was tense as my fangs broke her skin, giving a faint, repressed shudder. Her blood spilled onto my tongue, carrying with it a warm, heady rush of thalergy. For one glorious moment I was sated. I drank.

Harrow’s chest was heaving in jagged rises, the thrashing of a wounded animal, but she stayed still until I was finished. 

I was about to pull away when she slid a hand into my hair(usual), and pulled me up to kiss her(unusual). 

I reciprocated, of course, gentle, though her blood was on my lips. I scarcely believed it was happening. It was our fifth kiss in as many years- did you know you’re married to an absolute _prude_ \- always _no, Ianthe, you have to source your blood ethically, no, Ianthe, I won’t commit more murders with you, no, Ianthe, you can’t access the forbidden tomes of the Ninth-_

I feel the need to elucidate here, for the sake of your feeble little brain, that it wasn't as bad as it sounds. I wasn’t _trying_ to take advantage of a grieving woman. Well, actually, it was exactly that bad, but in a flavour two steps to the left. We were always of a height, you and I- and the way Harrow’s other hand settled delicately on my waist was decidedly uncharacteristic for _our_ interactions.

It was a kiss that said _Gideon, dead, is better than anyone else alive*._

_*Or undead._

I let her do it anyways, pathetic fool that I am, my excellent ripostes and dignity turned to bone ash in the face of her. Something about Harrow had the unique capacity to reduce me to a simpering wretch. 

Then she cupped my neck with her hand, and the ring- your stupid fucking wedding ring- your stupid fucking _pure silver_ wedding ring- pressed against my neck, cold and burning. The nausea hit before the pain did, but the pain hit like the wrath of the King Undying. 

She didn’t push me down so much as offer the faint suggestion of a shove. I went to my knees, quite unwillingly. Silver burns like a bitch. 

Harrow stared down at me with those lightless, starless eyes, the unforgiving black of eternal night. Her facepaint was smeared in a dark slash around her mouth. 

“Harry,” I said, working very hard to keep my voice even, my expression blank. “You heinous bitch.” 

“You were a very good instructor.” Harrow permitted. Her hand was on the join between my neck and shoulder now, and I could have tried to wrench it off, but didn't. I had my own proposals in mind, you see- I was doing the calculations in my head, and it told me that Harrow needed to win this battle if I were to win the war.

Instead of resisting I hissed through clenched teeth as the pain trickled down my spinal cord, and thought wistfully about ripping her organs out through her eye sockets. 

“Let me up, Harrowhark, you’ve made your point.” 

She made no answer. You Ninth gremlins really are something else. 

“I can’t help you if I’m all burnt up, Harry. How are you going to explain _my_ dead body?” A pause. “Are you sure you want to… raise the stakes?” 

And I did miss you then, because you would have laughed at that, in that shoulder shaking way you had. Instead my gorgeous joke sailed clear over Harrow’s horrid little head. 

She took her hand aside. The awareness of silver fell away, all at once, and I choked down my sigh of relief. 

“You presume too much.” said Harrowhark. Her voice was pure Drearburh frost, the promise of eternal destruction, the silvered blade in the dark. “This is not a bargain. The covenant of the chain is absolute.” 

She disregarded me in favour of running her fingers over the engraved lid of your casket. A dismissal, if I’ve ever seen one. 

I picked myself and my fragile sense of ego off the floor, waited a moment to see if she had anything else to say. 

Then, since I never know when to stop, and because I have the indomitable spirit of an entrepreneur, 

“You need to eat.”

By the time Harrow turned to me I had gathered myself and was affecting an air of nonchalance, like she hadn’t been on the verge of burning a hole into my spine.

“What?” 

“Your blood sugar levels are abysmal, Harry,” I said. “If you don’t eat something you’re going to faint halfway through service.” 

A hilarious concatenation of confusion was playing across her face. Negotiations, she knew how to handle. Your death unmanned her, but she knew death also. Someone offering a genuine, unconditional word of care threw her off completely, despite your best efforts. 

“Come on, Harry.” I coaxed. “Gideon would kill me if she knew I’d eaten and you hadn’t.” 

That made her mouth press into a thin line of contempt. 

“Don’t speak to me of Gideon.” she said. “You know nothing about her.” 

But oh, I _did._ In fact, I knew one thing I was willing to wager Harrow didn’t. That little fact was something I was saving; a surprise tool to help me later. 

“Consider it, at least.”

“Leave me.” said Harrow stonily. “I tire of your presence.”

Ah, well. They hate to see a girlboss winning. 

I sauntered out of the chapel and back into the church proper, and left Harrow there to tend your body.

I _was_ worried about Harrow fainting, genuinely, but I’d tried and been shot down, so now that was her problem. 

Your interment was scheduled for midmorning. The Secundarius Bell, Harrow had said, like that was supposed to mean anything to me. 

There was a period of time between your casket being moved to the sanctuary and the first funeral goers arriving. I used that time to surreptitiously daub my lips clean of greasepaint, using the only water on hand(which was holy, contained at fonts by the door.) That also hurt, but it was better than having “I kissed Harrowhark Nonagesimus'' smudged all across my face. 

You’d be pleased to know that everyone made it, despite how long it takes to get to your little backwater. The Fourth, the Fifth, the Sixth, and the two remnants of the Third, barely filling up the two front pews. The cathedral fairly creaked with the force of our waiting, the expectant silence, the faint scuffle of feet on carpet. From the Ninth there were only two attendees; Ortus and Aiglamene from earlier. That didn’t seem right, but I didn’t know enough about the Ninth to dispute it. 

Coronabeth had entered with the Sixth. The Sixth looked at me as one unit when I sat down with them, next to Corona. Their grief was held close, quiet, blindingly sincere. I had to look away first. 

I took Coronabeth’s arm, and she managed to give me a trembling smile. Her eyes were puffy and red, as though she had been crying recently. Perhaps she was even genuinely sad. She was thinking of her own mortality, I could tell. 

I was never one to love selflessly, but Coronabeth was as good as an extension of myself- I loved her, always would, as viciously as a starving dog crouched over roadkill. It was for this that I embraced her, murmured comforts into her ear. She leaned into my shoulder and sobbed, partly for you but mostly for herself. 

We sat. We waited. Distantly, bells rang. 

Harrowhark materialized from the back of the sanctuary, looking like an apparition, a herald of some unlovely end. Her paint had been reapplied, the paleness ghastly in the gloom. A vision of a revenant, set to vanish in the morning mist. The revenant had a rosary and a sprig of hawthorn in her hands, which she laid upon your casket wordlessly.

The bells faded into nothingness. Your pallbearers stepped forth. 

Aiglamene and Ortus shouldered the front, one impassive, one visibly stricken. Camilla Hect behind them, face set in a rictus of grief, Magnus Quinn at the rear, murmuring consolations to Jeannemary, who was failing very badly at stifling tears. They were all that were left of the cavaliers that had been at Canaan. 

Together they carried you out of the sanctum, into the courtyard, under the cold and empty sky. At first I thought they would take you to some mausoleum, descend into the catacombs, or circle around to the little graveyard, but they did not; they took you away from the courtyard, into the forest. We followed. 

They took you onto a little dirt trail, established by pilgrims ages hence, which went to a brook in the forest. Beyond the brook lay a clearing, where your grave was already dug, waiting. It could only be accessed by stepping over, and I was glad for my recent feed. Would have been monstrously awkward to explain why I couldn’t cross running water.

There was a lattice of planks set across the grave, with shovels and rope already prepared. They set you down gently. Harrowhark, who had been leading the procession , came to stand by your tombstone. 

“There is nothing I can say to eulogize her,” she said. “She defies description. There is nothing anyone can do for her, any more. I can only give her this final service, as inadequate as it may be. 

O God our Saviour, Preserver, our King Undying, we come before you today to mourn your servant, who has passed from this realm to the next. 

We commend her to you, Lord, so you may take her into your grace. We commemorate her life, Lord, so that you may see the joy she brought to those who knew her living. We commit her body to the ground, Lord, so that she may be with you in body as with soul. Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”  
  
Harrow stopped, abruptly. She withdrew a little vial of bone ash from her robe. Ortus, head bowed respectfully, handed her a nasty iron needle, which she plunged without hesitation into her inner cheek. The gathered congregation winced. 

Harrow uncorked the vial, and smeared it upon her fingers with the fresh drawn blood until it ran together as a dark grey gunge. 

With the smooth motions of someone who had done this at least a hundred times before even hitting puberty, she bent over your casket, and began to draw a ward. 

There was a faint unrest from the other adepts present, myself included. Everything we knew- every system of Vitamancy developed- was predicated on _thalergy_. Life energy. The glyph Harrow drew now was unfamiliar, but recognizable- a bone ward, based on _thanergy._

The Kindly Prince had died and been Resurrected for our right to Thalergy, to preserve the world eternal as his domain. Thanergy was near impossible to harness, counter to all edicts granted by the Emperor All-Giving, close to heresy, the sole domain of the Ninth. 

The Necromancer of the Ninth house straightened, her ward done. She resumed service. 

“I pray now for Gideon Nav.” Harrow had not been a preacher’s daughter for nothing. Her voice was strong, her posture perfect, even as tears marred her sacred paint. “I pray that she lies buried, insensate, in perpetual rest with closed eye and stilled brain. I pray that she lies at peace, in perfect union with the Locked Tomb, beyond the reach of all that might trouble her. I pray that the King Over the River watches over her as she journeys into that long dark, and aught able to draw her back.

Let it be so.” 

“Let it be so,” we echoed. Harrow stepped back, and gave us a small nod. 

Magnus was crying along with Jeannemary now, as they lowered you down. Harrow, who had been standing so still I thought her petrified, made a sudden, swaying motion, like she wanted to stop them. I steadied her with a hand on her arm. 

One by one, we came up, and threw a shovelful of dirt into your grave. Soon your casket and its drawn deaths-head disappeared under the dark soil of the Ninth. 

“It is finished,” said Harrow. 

That was the cue. They said their last farewells in silence, a final prayer for your soul, and turned to leave. Each one, as they left, knelt by the creek and washed their hands, sprinkling drops over their head to erase the consecration. I stayed by Harrow, had my hand on her arm still. 

Without you something vital had undone within her. When she turned to me she had the expression of a dead woman walking. The world was not her home. 

“Come now, Harrow,” I said, with as much mercy as I knew how to give. “Let’s go back with the others.”

She let me lead her to the creek. I copied what the others had done, and stepped across the creek feeling a strange sense of having been cleansed. When I looked back Harrow was kneeling by the creek, her hands submerged in the stream. 

“She was my heart,” Harrow said. Her face was hidden to me, covered by her hands, but her voice was shaking. “The greatest part of me has gone with her.”

She looked up, despairing. It was all I could do not to flinch. The greasepaint had washed off her skin in swirling eddies of black and white, grey trickles carried away by the water. Harrow was utterly barefaced, all the sacredness gone.

Then, standing, said she:

“If two lie together, they have heat- but how can one be warm alone?”

And, unsteadily, “How will I be warm alone?”

**Author's Note:**

> happy holidays dilapidatedcorvid! your prompts did give me worms in the brain and this story has runaway into something much longer than expected, so i hope this first chapter hits all the notes you were looking for
> 
> some notes for the funeral: i have no experience with christian or maori burials, though i did try to incorporate broad elements of both, as well as some wild speculation on what Ninth house funerals might be like. the rites you see here are me just making stuff up. welcoming feedback if anyone's got any! i'm siltblooded on tumblr & twitter if you want to reach out


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